|
|
|
 |
| |
A Healthy History: National Center for Agricultural Utilization
Research Marks 60 Years
|
|
Microbiologist Cletus Kurtzman
retrieves yeasts from the ARS
Culture Collection.
(K7406-1)
|
Always an abundant source of food and
fiber, U.S. agriculture provides an ever-broadening array of technologies to
improve the quality of life. Medical use of farm products is no exception,
thanks to research begun in a big way 60 years ago. Now, as in those early
days, teams of Agricultural Research
Service scientists work toward their goals with partners in academia and
industry.
"While the mission of some of our research centers has always been to find
new uses for agricultural products, we believe spinoffs of new discoveries that
can be applied to other endeavors are unlimited," says Peter B. Johnsen,
director of the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research (NCAUR),
Peoria, Illinois. |
|
Andrew Moyer, in his Peoria
laboratory, discovered the
process for mass producing
penicillin.
(K9422-1)
|
Setting in motion a string of
medically related discoveries at Peoria was a historic telegram received by
center director Orville E. May on July 9, 1941. The telegram asked for the
center's participation with Oxford University scientists Howard Florey and
Norman Heatley in research on pilot-scale production of penicillin. Cooperative
research, which would soon involve industrial partners like Merck, Squibb,
Lilly, and Pfizer, began immediately. That was just months before the United
States entered World War II and within a year of when the center and three
other new U.S. Department of Agriculture utilization research laboratories
opened their doors. Their mission was to find uses for surplus farm commodities
in the era of the Great Depression.
The NCAUR penicillin research team invented deep-tank fermentation technology
to mass-produce the infection-fighting lifesaver, and the antibiotics industry
was born. The Penicillium strain they discovered, NRRL 1951, is the
parent of most modern commercial Penicillium strains. As early as May
1943, some 1,500 military people were being treated with penicillin in one
hospital. Only a year later, countless lives were saved in connection with the
Allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day—June 6, 1944. |
|
Many medical and personal
care products contain the
absorbent compound Super
Slurper developed at NCAUR.
(K7218-20)
|
When the U.S. military became
involved in the Korean war, scientists at NCAUR quickly made an all-out effort
to develop an economical way to mass-produce dextran, a polysaccharide. Dextran
is produced when a strain of the bacterium Leuconostoc mesenteroides
acts on cane or beet sugars. Dextran was quickly approved as a blood extender
for use in military medicine in 1950 and for civilian use in 1953.
A common thread in the penicillin and dextran developments was microbiological
expertise and resources. Shortly after the Korean war, the dextran research
team tapped a strain of the bacterium Xanthomonas campestris from among
microbes at NCAUR to develop xanthan gum, a thickening substance with food and
industrial applications.
In the early 1940s, the lab possessed a collection of nearly 1,200 mold
strains. Today, the ARS Culture Collection at NCAUR has more than 80,000
microbial strains. |
|
Penicillia sp. growing on
decaying wood.
(K8611-12)
|
"Modern DNA technologies now
allow us to accomplish in a few thousand hours of work what we might have
achieved in whole careers, as we tap into the vast reservoir of genetic
resources in the ARS Culture Collection," says Cletus P. Kurtzman,
research leader of NCAUR's Microbial Properties Unit. For example, through a
cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA), Boston Probes, Inc.,
and ARS scientists are deciphering genetic information to identify potential
disease-causing organisms throughout the entire collection of about 10,000
ascomycetous yeast strains. Among these are Candida species that are the
cause of skin and deep-tissue infections.
New microorganisms are often needed, and they can be found more readily than
ever before. In the late 1990s, NCAUR microbiologist Stephen W. Peterson and
colleagues found 39 new Penicillium species, the largest such discovery
described by any person or group since the genus was first described in H.F.
Link's 1809 dissertation. Peterson added the new species to the ARS Culture
Collection, alongside 102 previously known Penicillium species,
including the ones NCAUR scientists used to help launch the antibiotics
industry. |
|
Microbiologist Mark Jackson examines a
fungal culture that will be used
to mass produce a biopesticide for
silverleaf whitefly.
(K9512-2)
|
The Penicillia were among
1,300 different microscopic fungi found growing in a collection of wood-decay
specimens. NCAUR microbiologist Donald T. Wicklow and his colleagues, with help
from the Biotechnology Research and Development Corporation (BRDC) in Peoria,
have produced thousands of extracts from the fungal cultures and have shared
those extracts with BRDC member companies. The companies are screening them for
chemicals that might serve as agricultural pesticides, animal health products,
and antifungal antibiotics.
In the 1970s, NCAUR scientists invented Super Slurper, a starch polymer that
can be used in hospital bedding, bandages, and personal care products to absorb
blood, urine, and moisture. |
|
Fantesk co-inventor George
Fanta (chemist) uses a steam
jet-cooking process to make
the substance.
(K9256-8)
|
More recently, research on anaerobic
microbes in cattle rumens led to collaboration between NCAUR biochemist Terence
R. Whitehead and researchers concerned with human diseases such as gingivitis,
colon cancer, endocarditis, and meningitis. NCAUR microbiologist Kerry
O'Donnell's research to genetically characterize human disease-causing strains
among fungi in the ARS Culture Collection's Fusarium species (normally
associated with plant diseases) should benefit scientists working on diagnostic
tests for clinical problems, such as eye infections.
Other projects relate to health and the environment. Notable examples include
the 1940s development of deep-tank microbial production of
riboflavin—vitamin B2—and 1990s processes that chemist
George E. Inglett developed to extract fiber from grains for use as food
ingredients like Oatrim and Nutrim, which can replace fat and increase
soluble-fiber content.
The research on deep-tank fermentation that helped launch the antibiotics
industry may have a modern counterpart: the beginnings of an industry to
produce environmentally friendly microbial biopesticides. NCAUR microbiologist
Mark A. Jackson and his colleagues are fine-tuning mass production of
insect-battling microbes, using a deep-tank fermentation technique similar to
those used commercially to produce alcohol and baker's yeast.
A newly renovated pilot plant within the center is advancing technology on an
invention by NCAUR chemists George F. Fanta and the late Kenneth Eskins. That
invention, called Fantesk™, a starch-water-oil composite with unusual
physical properties, has a wide range of potential applications. Large amounts
of the composite will be manufactured for research and product use in the new
pilot plant under a CRADA with Hy-Gene Biomedical Corporation, of Ventura,
California. Hy-Gene holds an exclusive license with ARS for medical products
and a nonexclusive license for cosmetic applications.
Cooperative research involving NCAUR and the Peoria branch of the University of
Illinois Medical School points to other medical applications for Fantesk. The
product may become a vehicle to carry injectable pharmaceuticals dissolved in
0.1- to 10-micron-diameter oil droplets to the circulatory systems of humans
and animals.
In other cooperative research, NCAUR chemist Mark A. Berhow, plant physiologist
Steven F. Vaughn, chemist Charles L. Cantrell, and their University of Illinois
colleagues are prospecting for components in soybeans and other agricultural
products that might help animals and humans stay cancer free. While some
natural and synthetic chemicals disrupt DNA, sometimes resulting in
malignancies, other compounds help protect against this type of irreversible
damage. Researchers hope to find DNA-friendly compounds—called
chemoprotectants—to counter the unfriendly ones in food and the
environment.—By Ben Hardin,
Agricultural Research Service Information Staff.
This research is part of New Uses, Quality, & Marketability of Plant
& Animal Products (#306), an ARS National Program described on the World
Wide Web at http://www.nps.ars.usda.gov.
To reach scientists mentioned in this article, contact
Ben Hardin, USDA-ARS
Information Staff, phone (309)
681-6597, fax (309) 681-6690. |
|
"A Healthy History: National Center for
Agricultural Utilization Research Marks 60 Years" was published in the
July 2001
issue of Agricultural Research magazine.
|
|
|
[Top]
|
|
|
|
Share/Bookmark
Printable Version
E-mail this page
